NY Public Restroom Costs $2.3 Million

28 Sep 2012

How much should a public restroom cost? If you have to go to the bathroom in Elmhurst park in Queens, New York, you can go in style. A new facility there that features two urinals and one stall for men and three stalls for women cost $2.3 million to build.

Robert Holden, who runs the Juniper Park Civic Association, charged:

If anybody out there can tell us the taxpayers, that a bathroom like this should be $2.3 million. That’s obscene. It’s just a tremendous waste of space and, especially, money. This may be good for Donald Trump or Mayor Bloomberg, but the taxpayers of New York don’t need this.

Anthony Nunziato, president of the Middle Village Maspeth Civic Association, added, “It’s large, but it’s not functional, and that’s the key here, what’s functional?” A spokesperson for the Parks Department offered a reason for the extravagance: because public bathrooms are used so frequently, the city used more durable materials, such as thicker gauge door metal and all-steel sanitary piping.

Holden stated: “This breaks all the rules of form follows function … Shouldn’t this money go to pay for more cops or for more parks maintenance?”